Something was very wrong, more wrong than a phone call had prepared him for, and he did not yet understand it, but he understood, watching them slip down that alley, that he had arrived not a moment too soon.

Chapter 4 — They’ve Been Doing That for Months

“They’ve been doing that for months,” a voice said, from behind a wooden fence.

Alvin turned to find Mrs.

Gable, the neighbor who had lived next door for thirty years, who had watched him grow up, who had brought his mother soup and borrowed his father’s tools across three decades of ordinary neighborly life.

“Why?” Alvin asked, and he heard his own voice come out tight and low.